


i like it when you sleep

by icarxs



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Adam has a minor panic attack at one point, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Drug Abuse, Future Fic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Drug Addiction, M/M, Marriage Proposal, OFFICIALLY AU!!!, Post-Gansey's Death, Sad with a Happy Ending, cabeswater is matchmaker, obscene amounts of driving places, ronan is a happy farmer!! blue has a cute gf!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-12
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-06-01 21:33:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,925
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarxs/pseuds/icarxs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><div class="center">
  <p>RICHARD CAMPBELL GANSEY III<br/>BELOVED BROTHER, SON AND FRIEND<br/>EXCELSIOR</p>
  <p>“I still think we should’ve had it say Squash One, Squash Two,” says Ronan.</p>
</div>
            </blockquote>





	i like it when you sleep

**Author's Note:**

> In two weeks this is going to be AU, probably.
> 
> my [twitter](http://twitter.com/dcrklings) is here so come and shout at me if you like, I thrive off hatred.
> 
> EDIT: thank you SO MUCH to mochroimanam for britpicking this for me. Now Ronan and Adam don't call each other pricks and twats like they went to the public boys school down my street - I'm eternally grateful.

When Adam crosses the border between Pennsylvania and West Virginia Cabeswater unfurls gleefully towards him like ivy, seeking out tendrils, greeting him cautiously as though it isn’t sure what his response will be, like an old lover. It’s almost enough to make him slam on the breaks and commit some sort of traffic violation in his haste to escape, but he just sets his jaw hard and keeps his foot on the accelerator.

He’s driving an Audi. It’s black and purrs seamlessly under his fingers like a satisfied cat; he never has to worry about it breaking down halfway to work, he doesn’t have to make some kind of awkward joke about it being “vintage” instead of cheap, and he doesn’t have to wedge the door closed and hope for the best. It might have zero personality, but there’s something about that power under his feet and the way people look at him when he slams the door outside his apartment - Adam _enjoys_ that kind of security. He enjoys knowing that he has the money to fill up the overpriced tank. He likes being sensible.

He’d been sensible enough to drive up to Henrietta on a Sunday evening, when the traffic is sparse (because who does an interstate crossing on a Sunday?) and he’d been sensible enough to get time off months in advance and he’d been sensible enough, even, to preemptively break up with Mark from the gym he’d sort-of-maybe been seeing. His reasoning had been ridiculous but Gansey-logical; it’s really difficult to explain “I’m going to a reunion with my old expensive boarding school ex-boyfriend because it’s also the 7th anniversary of my best friend from high school’s tragic death. Did I mention that I can speak to trees?” and the guy hadn’t been worth the trouble of concocting a lie to explain his week-long absence.

Adam Parrish has a bit of a reputation for being cold. Mark had certainly said so, anyway. Adam had just thought, _Gansey would’ve hated your hair_ , apologised a few times at the right points, and left to pack.

The closer he gets to Henrietta the more Cabeswater sings to him. Adam’s heart begins to pound and he pulls over some sixty miles out and puts his head on the steering wheel and forces himself to breathe, because his skin is tingling all over, humming, and he knows he’s near the ley line. It’s like doing three shots at once, it’s like twenty four hours of no sleep and a coffee every hour, it’s like passing an exam, it’s like sex - it’s like, _have I been tired for seven years?_ He takes a long deep breath of West Virginian air.

He says, aloud, “this is okay.”

He says, “you don’t own me any more.”

He says, “Parrish, grow up.”

Henrietta hasn’t changed a bit in seven years; Adam takes all the turns with unconscious ease, knows it all like he knows his apartment back in New York; his car doesn’t screech on the bends like the old pile of bolts he used to drive, and there’s something in him that misses that. The part of him doesn’t last long, though. He drives past the mechanic’s where he used to work, with its old sign outside, a bit rustier but pretty much the same, and he remembers the smell of grease embedded into the whorls of his fingertips, the exhaustion, the pain in the small of his back that never seemed to go away, the way that the oil got everywhere, all over his clothes, over Monmouth, over Ronan -

His brain skitters to a halt. He swerves over into the center of the road and pulls the car back into place with furious determination. _Shit_. He’d caught himself off-guard - that was ridiculous, ridiculous and dangerous. Adam catches sight of himself in the rear view mirror; he’s flushed. _Fuck_.

He calls Blue. It’s a _time to call Blue_ kind of feeling.

“Hello?” she says, and there’s something in her voice that’s strange, that’s uncertain and afraid, and Adam realises that it’s well past midnight now and he must’ve woken her up.

“Oh, sorry, I didn’t realise the time.”

“Adam?” Blue sounds a strange mixture of relieved and disappointed. Adam frowns, drumming his fingers on the wheel. He almost signals down the road to Monmouth Manufacturing but catches himself at the last minute.

“Who else would it be?”

“Oh,” Blue says, oddly. “I don’t know. Are you back?”

 _Back_ , thinks Adam. Back means _home._ Blue has lived in San Francisco for years and yet Henrietta is still _back_ for her. “Not yet. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“It’s okay.” Adam hears the rustle that means she’s moving, rolling over in bed, stretching. He hears her yawn and the image strikes him hard like a headache, Blue with her hair ruffled, sleep-soft. He doesn’t want her, not like that, but it’s such a nostalgic picture that he has to sigh. It reminds him of studying for finals with her and Gansey and Ronan, with Noah throwing scraps of paper at them, trying to distract them, Ronan chucking a math textbook across the room in frustration and turning to Adam and sulking, Gansey drilling them on Latin verbs, Blue in his polo - that’s what she is to him. “You alright?”

“Yeah, I was just.” He stops himself. He’s gone whole years without speaking to Blue, and then there will be weeks when they talk every day - she knows him well enough to read in his silence a single name.

“Yeah,” she says. “You still okay to do this?”

Adam snorts, forced. “Obviously,” he says, dismissively. “I haven’t seen Henry Cheng in almost a decade. I need to see if he’s aged as badly as I hoped.”

Blue laughs, then claps a hand to her mouth audibly. She’s in Fox Way, her childhood room; the walls are thin. “He was already forty when we knew him,” she says gleefully.

“Plus,” Adam adds, “I need to take him up on his date offer. You know he asked me to go for a pizza with him? It was embarrassing.”

“We all knew,” Blue points, and Adam remembers - that Ronan had stormed about it for days. Blue changes the subject quickly, but Adam is lost already, so irritated at himself, at this - at running into a Ronan shaped wall every way he turns. Blue says, “I’ll see you tomorrow,” and Adam has to shake himself, turning down an unfamiliar road that leads to the Henrietta Hotel. Adam thinks that the Henrietta Hotel’s alliteration is probably the best thing about it.

“Definitely,” he says, with forced cheerfulness. “I need to see Orla. She’s probably missed me.”

“I think she has, actually,” says Blue contemplatively. “Though she’d never admit it.”

He had been right about Henrietta Hotel. It definitely looks haunted, but there are lights still on in reception and by this point all Adam wants is a bed and a shower and potentially a greasy burger. He isn’t picky about the burger. Adam longs for Monmouth abruptly, for wide open ceilings, for walls covered in maps, for Noah, whose face he can no longer picture, and for the Gansey’s strange bare bed.

He parks, swearing when he hits the curb. “Nice,” Blue comments, sleepily. “You drive as well as you used to.”

“I’m hanging up on you.”

“You do that.” He can feel her smile all the way across town. “I’ll see you.”

She clicks off before he can; he wonders where she learnt to do that.

***

The next morning, Adam walks to Fox Way. He could drive, but there’s something about his feet on the pavements of Henrietta that feels right - maybe it’s Cabeswater, telling him to get closer to the soil. He knows that it’s the forest’s fault he’d slept poorly, tossing and turning; he’d dreamt of vines that twined in disturbingly familiar patterns, and he’d woken with the sound of the stream in his ears. He tucks his hands into the pockets of his jeans and rolls his eyes at himself and forces himself to stop thinking about it. He isn’t that boy anymore. There’s nothing in Cabeswater that can scare him.

He rounds the corner of Blue’s street and sees her immediately, sitting on the sidewalk, knees up, huge combat boots on. She’s still just as small, even if the roundness of her face has changed from the last of her childhood puppy fat and become the plumpness of happiness, even if her hair is a little bit longer now, to her shoulders, piled on the top of her head and secured by a large green clips. She is digging in the gutter with a stick, deep in concentration, and Adam laughs out-loud and she looks up and smiles that wide transformative smile of hers - he remembers what she used to be to him, that signifier of everything in the world he couldn’t have. She has deep green eyeliner on, winged to perfection, deep green lipstick, a forest sprite; Cabeswater, again. She comes up to his collarbone. She stands on tiptoes to hug him with a squeak that her high school self would probably have disapproved of. “Adam! Parrish!”

“Yes,” says Adam, “that’s my name.”

“ _God_ ,” says Blue, and hugs him again. Adam presses his face carefully to the bare skin of her shoulder and inhales the soft skin there; she smells like home. “I missed you so much.”

“Let me look at you,” says Adam, and he’s grinning, he doesn’t think he’s smiled this wide for months and months. He holds her back, hands on her shoulders; she looks good. She looks happy, skin flushed from the heat; she looks like herself. “You look great,” he says, “I take it you’re doing well?”

She twirls, her dress flaring out around her thighs, fluttering in flashes of deep blues and greens and browns. “This is one of mine.”

“How much is it?”

“You couldn’t afford me.” She winks at him and he laughs and wraps an arm around her shoulder and feels that small thorn in his chest loosen just a little. She’s dropped the stick. She ducks her head into his shoulder. “You look tired.”

“I am tired,” says Adam, “I forgot how long the drive here is.” He knows that’s not what she means. “I didn’t get to sleep until late.” That’s not what she means either. Blue fixes him with a sceptical look. He deflates. “I’m always tired.”

“You shouldn’t be so far from Cabeswater,” she says knowledgeably. “It’s draining for you.”

“Alright, witch,” says Adam. “Teen witch. Not even a teen anymore. On your way to middle age witch. That’s just sad.”

Blue takes his hand firmly. “Come on, loser,” she says, cheerfully. “Come in and get recharged.”

***

Maura has aged well. Her spiraling dark curls are touched with grey and the lines on her face are deeper, but she still glows with that strange sense of self that all the women of Fox Way do, and Adam allows himself to be enclosed in her embrace, grinning. She touches his forehead. “Look at you,” she says, and doesn’t add anything comforting like _how you’ve grown_ , or _aren’t you good-looking_ , she just leaves it at that. Adam squints at Blue. Blue shrugs. “How’s the big city treating you?”

“Good,” says Adam. He follows her through to the kitchen. He hasn’t felt this young in a very long time. “I’ve missed this.”

“Of course you have,” says Maura sharply. Adam glances at Blue again. Blue, who is buried in the fridge, doesn’t notice.

“Um,” says Adam. “How are you?”

“Very good,” says Maura cheerfully. “Tea?”

“No, no thank you,” Adam replies hastily. “I’m alright. Maybe coffee, if you have it?”

Maura makes a face. “We may do around here somewhere.”

“Can’t you just, y’know,” Blue makes a vague gesture, “grow yourself some coffee beans?”

Adam raises his eyebrows. “I’m a magician, not a walking greenhouse.”

“Lame,” Blue grins, and returns to the fridge.

At some point between Adam asking for coffee and Adam being presented with a mug of something that definitely isn’t coffee, the kitchen fills and empties. 300 Fox Way is just as busy as always, though the girls have gone through a full rotation since he was last year, graduations and births and deaths entwining together to create a new tapestry of faces, most of whom regard him with faint suspicion. He’s content to sit and grin at all the young ones who stare at him and whisper _that’s the magician, that’s the forest boy_ , and avoid the angry gazes of the elders, who seem to have decided that he’s there to threaten their virtues. Only Calla acts ordinary towards him, and that’s probably because she has a cocktail in hand. The clock has just ticked round to eleven am. Adam understands and sympathises.

“Blue said that you’ve been feeling drained?” she asks, leaning over the counter towards him. Adam, sniffing his not-coffee curiously, blinks at her.

“Um,” he says, confused, “she did?”

“Well, no. I thought I’d tell you that to soften the blow. We can all tell.”

“That didn’t soften the blow.”

“I tried.” She straightens up, holds out a hand imperiously. “Palm.”

“I’m actually okay -”

“ _Now_ , coca cola boy.”

“ADAM PARRISH!”

The shout - more of a war cry than a greeting - emits from Orla, who is just as stunningly beautiful as she was when Adam was a teenager. When she tumbles in through the door his mind goes blissfully blank for a long moment - she’s in red today, and her breasts are very, well, breast-like - before he realises that she’s expecting a reaction. Calla withdraws her hand, looking disappointed but knowing she’s lost her opportunity for the moment. “Um,” he says, “hello.”

“No hug?”

He laughs. Her hug is more of a vice-like grip, but he accepts it with some grace anyway. As soon as they have parted her hand is under his nose. “LOOK!”

On her finger is a very large diamond. Adam grins. “Blue told me. Congratulations.”

Orla sends Blue a nasty look for stealing her thunder before falling back into her delighted beam. “She’s very rich,” she says, conspiratorially.

“Ah,” says Adam.

“Blue’s designing my wedding dress!” Orla adds, clearly thrilled.

“It’s orange,” chips in Blue.

“Dear God,” says Adam. Calla giggles.

“And how about you?” Orla says, taking his arm tightly. Adam mouths _help_ in Maura’s direction and receives nothing but a beady-eyed smile. It’s somewhat terrifying. “Why have you never introduced us to anyone?” She pouts. “Are you _ashamed_ of us?”

“Well, to be fair,” Adam says, “it would be hard to explain why the man Maura is sleeping with always has three deadly weapons on him. And why a centuries old Princess lives in your attic. And the fact that you can all see the future.”

“Not all,” chips in Blue, again. She is spooning large amounts of yogurt into a bowl from corner containers; there is a steadily growing line of discarded pots with a layer of sweet fruit abandoned at the bottom. Adam opens his mouth to ask, then decides against it, returning to Orla.

“Close enough,” he says. “But I’m not dating anyone.” _Anymore_ , he adds silently. He decides not to tell Orla about Mark. Or his grindr account. She’d probably have an aneurysm. For such a loud girl she’s a real romantic.

“Hm,” says Orla, terrifyingly. “Palm.”

“I don’t need my future read,” says Adam, stubbornly, because the thought makes him queasy. “Do me a card reading if you want to, but I’d rather not know my life line is tiny, thanks.”

“That doesn’t mean what you think,” Orla winks. Adam rolls his eyes and she huffs. “Alright, alright. Come through. Usually I’d charge you, but -”

“But you know I wouldn’t pay because I don’t actually want this to happen?”

She pouts, again. “You are so mean. Blue, control your pet.”

“Surprisingly harsh, but okay,” says Adam mildly.

The parlor looks the same as always, scattered with velvet, with scrying balls, with delicate artwork that somehow changes shape before Adam’s eyes. Orla draws the curtains dramatically and he laughs at her; she scowls back, which for her is affectionate. Blue hovers in the doorway and Orla gestures her over impatiently. “Come on, then,” she says. Blue grins triumphantly.

“Excellent,” says Adam, sitting gingerly, “more witnesses.”

“Shut up and take it,” says Blue, brightly. She presses her hand to Orla’s shoulder; Orla’s eyes roll back.

“Woah,” she breathes. “I forgot you were the good stuff, girl.”

“That’s me,” says Blue, looking like she isn’t sure if that’s a compliment. “The, uh, good stuff.”

“The table at Starbucks that everyone wants,” Adam quotes, softly, and Blue smiles really this time, the secret caught between them for a short second before Orla cuts through it, shuffling her cards with a snap. She holds them out, as imperious as Calla’s hand.

“Take one,” she says, “lay it down.”

“Really?” says Blue. “That casually? You aren’t going to set out -”

“Look,” Orla interrupts fiercely. “Who’s the seer here? Take one.”

Adam does, laying it face down. The background is black ink entwining; it’s familiar and tugs at him, tries to make him remember. It looks like a black beetle on the deep blue velvet that covers the table, like a shadow crossing the night sky. Orla swiftly deals two cards, flanking it like soldiers. “Alright,” she says, “turn them.”

The card Adam had picked is the Magician. As always, a shudder passes up his spine. Orla doesn’t seem impressed. “That’s unhelpful,” she says.

“That’s me.”

“Exactly. You may as well have pulled nothing. We _know_ you’re here.” She sighs, taps the other two. Adam frowns at them. “Eight of swords,” she says.

“Self-imposed isolation,” says Adam impatiently. He misses his own cards. They’re wrapped in black velvet in his bedside drawer at home; he doesn’t use them often, but when he does he does it properly, candles, incense, cleansing rituals and all. If there’s anything he’s learnt over the years it’s not to fuck with magic. “Alright, I get it. But -”

“The Hanged Man,” says Orla, looking very satisfied with herself.

“So, what? Self-sacrifice?” says Adam. “I’ve already done that, thanks.”

“No,” says Orla, and she looks at Blue and Blue looks back, in that way that they have, like the air between them is turning solid, and when Blue grins at Adam her eyes are alight with wickedness.

“Greywaren,” says Blue.

“You have _got_ to be joking,” says Adam, and that’s when the door slams open.

They all jump. Blue laughs, except that it’s more of a cackle. Ronan ducks in with an apologetic expression. “Yo,” he says, “sorry. Oh, hey, Parrish.”

“Hey,” says Adam, and he feels himself go very red very quickly, which was _not_ how he planned this to go, and Blue is looking at him significantly, and even though Orla gathers the cards quickly before Ronan can see the reading - not that he’d understand it; he’s still uncomfortable around tarot, that’s clear by the way he is standing slightly on the balls of his feet, like he’s ready to move - he’s sure that Ronan knows they were talking about him.

Orla rolls her dark eyes, standing abruptly, as if to say, _I don’t have time for this kind of unrequited shit_. “You’re too white to say ‘yo,’ Lynch,” she says, brushing a hand over Adam’s shoulder. Maybe she had felt his pulse spike too.

“I invented yo. I am yo. I’m the most badass person in Henrietta.”

“When was the last time you even hit someone?”

“I punched a girl scout yesterday. I didn’t have a reason to, she was just in my way.” Now that the cards are long gone Ronan throws himself into the seat next to Adam, all long slim limbs, looking pleased with himself as Orla flounces out of the room, Adam’s future clutched to her chest. Blue grins.

“I’m going to get my tea,” she says, mysteriously. Adam narrows his eyes at her retreating back. Ronan looks - Ronan looks _amused_.

“How are you?”

“Unable to believe that I just heard you boasting about punching a girl scout,” says Adam, reaching for his cup of not-coffee reflexively so he has something to do with his hands.

“What can I say? They’re so innocent and pure. I can’t stand it.”

Adam smiles despite himself. “You look -”

Ronan looks really nice. Ronan looks _healthy_. Ronan has put on weight; his skin isn’t pulled tight over his cheekbones anymore, and his hair has grown out into soft brown curls, slightly tangled at the nape of his neck. Adam wraps his hands around the mug to stop himself from reaching out and tugging on the lock that falls over his forehead. He looks like the sunlight loves him. His eyes are still sharp, wicked, assessing, but they’re clear and soft and _happy_ , and he leans back in his chair just a little, the sleeves of his dark sweater rolled up over his forearms (clean, speckled with thin pale white scars of varying shapes but clean), and Adam swallows.

“-good,” he finishes, weakly.

“Thanks.” He grins, wide, and Adam realises - with an abrupt drop in his stomach - that he’s never seen Ronan like this before. This is Ronan pre-Niall Lynch. This is a happy Ronan, a Ronan without any cares, a Ronan that doesn’t dream up night horrors anymore. Adam wonders if he even dreams, or if he’s learnt to control that too. Adam sneaks a glance at Ronan’s hands and they are still, not a single tremor. This Ronan doesn’t need a shot in his coffee in the mornings; this Ronan doesn’t need Adam. “You look tired.”

“Funnily enough, I’ve already heard that,” says Adam wryly. He takes a long drink, eyes closed. Ronan snorts.

“I’m serious. Don’t they let you sleep, up in…whatever it is. Boring Ecology Shit LTD?”

Adam cracks one eye open. “Don’t be a shitbag,” he says. Ronan is still smiling, his eyes crinkling; he has slight laugh lines at the corners of his eyes, and for one lurching sudden desperate moment Adam can see what he’ll look like when he’s old, a sprinkling of grey at his temples, laughter inscribed on his features like scars. There was once a time when Adam hadn’t thought Ronan would ever get old. “You’re almost thirty. You can’t say things like ‘boring ecology shit.’”

“Uh,” says Ronan, “watch me.”

Adam hides a grin over his coffee, the Hanged Man momentarily forgotten. Ronan stretches, extends his long legs obnoxiously into Adam’s space. He says, “you looking forward to tomorrow?” and Adam grimaces.

“Like a hole in the head.”

“Same. You’d better stick with me, I don’t want to end up comforting Maggot alone.”

There is a pause, a beat too long, because Adam opens his mouth to say, _when haven’t I,_ to say, _we always stick together_ , to remind him of the roar of the BMW when he’d dragged Adam around the parking lot, and then he remembers that he hadn’t stuck with him, not when it most mattered. The idea that Ronan is thinking of that, barely a foot away from him, makes Adam’s stomach lurch in nausea, and Ronan’s cheekbones flush a little. Hurriedly, he says, “I want to go and see Aglionby.”

“I think breaking and entering would still be considered illegal,” says Adam, pleased to find that his voice is steady. Ronan snorts.

“True, I wouldn’t want to affect my blemish free record.”

Adam laughs out loud at that. “Blemish free?” he exclaims. “What is your definition of ‘blemish’ there, Lynch?”

Ronan grins crookedly, shark-like, patented. “Murder,” he says. “The trees still talk to you?”

Adam shifts uncomfortably. “They try to,” he says, honestly. “How about you, Greywaren? Dreamt yourself anything nice?”

Ronan shrugs. “Nothing of note,” he says, and his eyes are shining.

“Nothing clawed?”

“Not lately. Is that your way of asking how I am?”

“Close enough.”

Ronan leans in close. “Get this,” he says, and Adam resists the confusing contradictory urges to move closer and to shift away. “I eat organic vegetables now.”

“You’re kidding,” says Adam dryly.

“I know. It’s crazy stuff here, Parrish. I have a _functioning oven._ Sometimes I _cook meals from scratch._ I meet _deadlines_.”

“Anyone would think you were an adult well on your way to middle age.”

“I have paid taxes before.”

“Jesus Christ. Steady on.”

“I know.” Ronan grins at him and settles back in his chair. “I really do push the limits.”

Adam is sure that he hasn’t smiled this much in - years, maybe. “You’re such an asshole,” he says.

Once, maybe, Ronan would have responded with a sharp _fuck you_ , or with a grin that was more than a little bit dangerous and vicious, like a hawk about to dive. Ronan now does not. “Yeah,” he says, instead, “but I’m a _responsible_ asshole. Sort of.”

“Sort of?” questions Adam, raising his eyebrows.

“I can’t completely let the side down, can I?”

“I don’t know, Lynch, the whole eating-vegetables feels like an utter betrayal. I can barely look at you.”

Blue is back. She hovers in the doorway once more - Adam wonders if she’s ever strode into this room confidently, ever really felt at home here. But then she takes her familiar place on the chair by the window, curling her feet up under her, next to the old-fashioned phone, and he knows he’s being ridiculous. No one belongs at Fox Way like Blue Sargent. She says, “this is weird.”

“You’re weird,” shoots back Ronan, and for some strange reason Adam is relieved, like he had been waiting for Ronan to be a bit ruder. Blue frowns at him.

“Don’t be mean.”

“That was _not_ mean. I’ll show you mean.”

“Or you could not?” Adam suggests. Blue is right - this is weird. They haven’t been together, the three of them, since Gansey had. Well, since Gansey. Three instead of five feels simultaneously unbalanced and yet perfect, like the points of a triangle. Good things come in threes - or is it bad things? Or just things?

“Just things,” Adam says aloud. Ronan’s eyebrows shoot towards his hairline.

“Parrish has cracked,” he says. “New York broke him. It’s all the capitalism.”

“No, I was -” Blue is laughing at him. He finishes his coffee. “You know what? Never mind.”

Ronan smiles. “Listen to you,” he says. “You’re almost a true New Yorker. Not a vowel to be heard.”

Adam looks at him sharply. He would remember, if he let himself, other comments Ronan had made about his accent, years ago, but he doesn’t and he just says, “it’s assimilation, it does that.” It’s years of coaching himself out of it, until people stopped looking at him twice, until people asked _where are you from?_ instead of assuming. It’s the bland accent of politicians. Sometimes Adam hears recordings of himself and doesn’t recognise his own voice.

***

It’s approximately eighteen hours until seven years, and Adam doesn’t know what to do with himself.

The Henrietta Hotel room is too small for Adam’s body; he keeps feeling like if he throws out an arm too vigorously he’ll knock a hole through the cheap plasterboard. He misses his apartment, where everything is in its place, with its clean kitchen and meticulously made bed and bookshelves full of ancient tomes that would probably make Ronan sneeze. Being in this cramped place is too much like being a child again, with his nose to the wall, listening to his parents fight and wishing he could be strong enough to say something; even the sheets itch in the same way. The low Henrietta thread count, only for the poor. He tries to work, but the equations dance in front of his eyes and he doesn’t dare open his inbox anyway, for fear of becoming a fire fighter. It feels wrong to bring NYC here, where it’s so warm and muggy, where his accent becomes more and more of an accusation as he slips back into old habits.

There’s a mini bar, but inside there’s only lukewarm beer and Adam isn’t about that life. He rolls the bottle between his hands anyway as he sits at the desk, giving up on sleep, staring out at the blackness beyond the grimy window, feeling the condensation beading on his palms like sweat. Cabeswater says, _come and visit, I’ve missed you_ , in the rustle of the old willow in the parking lot, in the vine that begins to sprout in the limescale around the tap. Adam glares at it until it withers and dies; he doesn’t want to have to explain to the owner why his room is full of plants. When it becomes too much to bear and there’s a serious risk of ivy climbing the curtains he puts down the unopened bottle in disgust and grabs his keys. His phone slides into his pocket, paper thin and reassuringly sleek, but his jacket is old and ratty, the leather creased and flaking in parts. It’s so comfortable that it fits him like a second skin. On the way to the car he calls Ronan.

“Yeah?” he says. Adam almost trips over his own feet at the sound of his voice like this, hoarse and sleep-filled. It’s the opposite of Blue; he doesn’t hear Gansey in it, he just hears Lynch. Ronan clears his throat over the line. “Parrish?”

“Sorry, did I wake you?” says Adam, automatically, keeping his voice down as he passes under an open window on the second floor. The hot air barely stirs around him; he feels like he’s pushing his way through soup, and the gnats whine around his ears. Couldn’t Cabeswater tell the mosquitos to leave him alone? he thinks bitterly.

“Yeah, but it’s fine,” says Ronan, sounding a little more alert. “You alright?”

“Fine, I just couldn’t sleep.”

“Wanna come over?”

“Yeah.”

Adam’s car chirps softly in welcome when he clicks his keypad. It should probably feel stranger to drive to the Barns under these circumstances, but it doesn’t at all. That’s normal, though. After all, he’s _friends_ with Ronan now, they’re all friends, he’s allowed to want company; he could’ve asked Blue just as easily.

He’d thought he was past lying to himself - obviously not.

There are no cows sleeping in the fields any more when Adam swerves up the wide drive and kills the engine - they’re all put in for the night and they dream the ordinary dreams of farm animals, whatever they may be, instead of the complex nightmares of fantasy-things. Ronan has the front door open before Adam is halfway up the path, and Adam isn’t sure how he can live here, not with the stain of Niall Lynch’s blood still very faintly etched into the paving slabs - maybe he’d realised that Niall Lynch would always be staining some part of him and it was better to be home. Adam shoves his keys deep into his jeans pocket. Ronan looks soft and comfortable in a way that makes his entire body ache as though he’s coming down with something; Ronan’s bare feet on the polished wooden floors, his white t-shirt stretched over his shoulders, his hair sleep-mussed. He yawns. “Come in, then,” he says.

The cotton of his t-shirt is thin enough that the stark black of his tattoo shows through it in coy flashes. His sweats hang low off his hips. Adam shrugs off his jacket and tosses it in the general direction of the huge wood-hewn dining table, kicks off his boots, and enters the warmth of the kitchen with relief, because it’s a different kind of heat to outside. It’s warmth that comes from the wood-stoked range, the kind that is present in rooms around the world. There’s a bottle of whiskey ready on the counter, along with a single tumbler; Ronan gestures to it.

“It’s good,” he says, “apparently.”

Adam hesitates. Ronan has thrown himself into an over-stuffed armchair; he quirks an eyebrow. “What?”

“Are you okay with me drinking? I don’t have to -”

“Parrish, if I’ve ever seen someone who needs a drink it’s you. I’ll resist somehow.”

“You don’t have to -”

“Adam,” says Ronan firmly, and Adam’s veins shimmer, “pour yourself a fucking drink.”

So he does. He folds his legs under himself on the couch and swallows the finger of whiskey in one gulp and pours himself another - it is good - and then another, and when his mind doesn’t feel like a hive of distressed bees he lets out a long, long exhale and Ronan, who still looks sleepy but pleasantly so, says, “tell me about it.”

Adam feels unbalanced and perfect, sitting here opposite Ronan in this kitchen where they’d spent so much time, Ronan in his pajamas like it’s nothing. It’s so unbearably domestic that he wants to do something reckless, break the bottle or start a screaming row. He half expects Ronan to start knitting; he doesn’t. Instead he picks up a small black book from the side table and begins to scan it and lets Adam drink until he wants to talk.

Eventually, he does. He starts slow: he starts with, “what’s that?”

“Finances,” says Ronan. There is a pencil attached to the book with a long black ribbon; he rolls it between his fingers like a joint. He turns his face into his bicep to stifle a yawn and the spikes of his tattoo up around the nape of his neck are briefly visible. Adam is drinking his fourth glass more slowly.

He says, “this place looks great.”

Ronan smiles, a brief flicker of pride. “Yeah, well,” he says, “I needed a project and this was a good one. It was something to focus on and something productive, y’know, other than magic.”

Adam doesn’t ask how much of the work done on the Barns is made of dream-stuff, because he suspects the answer is ‘not much’ - it all has the air of hard graft, like Ronan had sanded the floors himself, like he really does get up at 5am every morning to milk the cows. Adam swirls his drink around the bottom of the glass for a few more minutes, until he’s summoned up enough courage to say, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?” shrugs Ronan Lynch, who hates apologies. Adam forces it out, though.

“I don’t know,” he says, though he does. “For fucking off to New York when you needed me here. For being angry at you when it wasn’t your fault. For Cabeswater and G - and Gansey - and that whole mess.”

Ronan smiles over the top of his little book, with all those neat columns of evidence of recovery, and says, “don’t stress it, Parrish,” and just like that, they’re okay. He puts the book down. “Is that really what was keeping you up?”

Adam shrugs, because he doesn’t know himself. He’s starting to feel a little drunk, his limbs relaxed and heavy. “Not sure,” he says, and he can feel his accent melting into place. “Maybe. And Gansey. You didn’t have any trouble sleeping.”

He is worried that Ronan will hear an accusation where he didn’t mean to place them, but he doesn’t. “I’m much better at that these days,” he replies instead. “I’ve got a lot more control. I haven’t woken up covered in blood in - Jeez, months.” He grins to show that he’s joking, but he isn’t really. Adam laughs anyway.

“That’s a relief,” he says, and he stands suddenly, makes his way towards the window. Cabeswater is so insistent it’s like a fishing hook embedded under his ribcage, tugging at his lungs. He actually lets out a sharp breath of almost-pain, and Ronan frowns at him, head thrown back so he can see him properly. His throat is bared to the ceiling, as vulnerable and pale as moonlight. Adam presses a hand to his diaphragm and mutters, “oh, come _on_.”

“What?” Ronan asks, sharply. “What is it?”

“Forests,” snorts Adam, and finishes his drink. It doesn’t make much difference, except that he can taste the berries in it as though they’re bursting on his tongue. “You have no idea -”

Ronan laughs. “I do, actually,” he says, like he's settling in for a long night. “Let me get my book.”

***

The next morning - or what passes as morning; they’ve both had three hours sleep, Adam on the comfortable couch by the range and Ronan curled up in the armchair, mouth open and book lying open on his lap - Ronan wakes him up so he can get the cows out, and offers him a lift back to the hotel to fetch his suit. This is probably a good idea, because Adam stands and realises that he’s still drunk.

He locks the door to the Barns, the key fitting easily in his palm. Ronan strides ahead towards the car, jeans now, hoodie thrown over the top, beanie. The pearly light of dawn glows smugly at them from behind thin whispy clouds. The pale pink sky is the same colour of Ronan’s lips over the rim of his cup of coffee.

“What is _that?_ ” he snaps, insultingly. There’s so much of the old him there that Adam winces and wants to smile all at the same time; he pats the hood of the Audi with vague affection. The Audi does not respond.

“Don’t be nasty,” says Adam, who might be accepting that he’s still head over heels by this point, “she can hear you.”

“I’m not driving this.”

“Oh, come on. It’s perfectly comfortable.”

Ronan, who was once a boy who used racing as a form of foreplay, visibly shudders. “Cars,” he says, very slowly, as though Adam has blasphemed, “should not be _comfortable._ ”

Adam throws the keys at him. Ronan catches them one handed and a flicker of a smile crosses his face. “Just shut up and get in,” Adam snaps.

Sitting down, Adam realises that he’s really quite drunk; he rests his forehead on the window for a moment of blissful coolness and listens to the familiar noises of Ronan getting into the driver’s seat, the creak of the leather under him, the jangle of keys and his mutter of complaint - _I can’t believe you own a car with an inbuilt GPS, Parrish, what have you become_ \- and then the soft almost silent thrum of the engine kicking into life. Ronan checks the rearview mirror, checks over his shoulder, checks Adam. Adam feels him checking and straightens up. “I’m fine. I’m good.”

“I didn’t ask.”

Adam rolls his eyes. “Alright,” he says, and it’s like they’re seventeen again. Ronan’s hands are starkly pale under the flash of lights, the windows of the Barns sending shards into the receding night. They pass the fields, the cows - real-cows, not dream-cows, stirring awake, lowing - and the Audi purrs past them, through the parking lot and out onto the open stretch of road that leads back into Henrietta. The window light turns into dawn light turns into street light turns into neon light and Adam watches it all pass over the features of Ronan’s face. He is serene - too serene, really. Ronan is never serene; like a lake, there’s always something waiting under the surface. He runs his fingers over his cheekbone in an old habit, checking for bruises though he knows there are none, and feels Ronan’s eyes flick to him and then away. _Manibus_ , he thinks, and for the first time in seven years Adam lets himself remember what it’s like to fuck Ronan Lynch.

“Remember,” Ronan starts, and for an odd moment, like missing a step, Adam thinks he’s read his mind and he’s going to say something like _remember when you fucked me in the Pig and Gansey almost killed you?_ or _remember when you tied me up with your school tie?_ or _remember the taste of my mouth?_ But of course he doesn’t. He says, “remember when our Latin teachers tried to kill us? Twice?”

Adam bites his lip in an attempt not to laugh. When he looks over at Ronan Ronan’s whole face is lit up. “Those were crazy times,” says Adam, forcing himself to keep a straight face. “I mean, sure, I never could decline my nouns, but it seems a bit extreme.”

Ronan laughs, head thrown back, and Adam can’t help but echo him. He is grinning so wide that it makes his face ache. “Oh, nouns,” says Ronan. “Remember those? Classic. _Dies, diei, diei, diem, die, dies, dierum_ -”

“Stop,” Adam interrupts dryly, “you know I can’t control myself.”

Ronan barks out another laugh. “Latin Declensions. Your true kink.”

“You just had to pick a difficult one, too, didn’t you. God, I hate you. You couldn’t have just declined _puella_.”

“ _Puella_ ,” Ronan rejoins promptly. “ _Puellam, puellae, puellae_ -”

“ _Stop_ ,” Adam whines. “This isn’t what I wanted.”

Ronan grins at the road in front of them. After a few beats, Adam says, “why didn’t you ever follow up on the language thing? You could’ve learnt Arabic, or - or Russian - something really good.”

“I spent two years doing heroin instead,” Ronan shrugs.

For another long moment they look at each other. Ronan is driving from sheer muscle memory - Cabeswater is this way, and the car is steady in the center of the lane even though Ronan has his eyes on Adam’s face. Then Adam’s mouth twitches and Ronan’s eyes crease up a little and Adam knows that it’s okay to laugh.

He rolls down the window to let some air in, sticks his hand out, tries to capture the currents in his palm. They slide through his fingers, as strong as rushing water and as cold; it’s that longed-for hour just after dawn when the heat of the ground can’t touch the air anymore and there’s finally a breath of air in West Virginia. This was Adam’s favourite time when he was younger; the air used to feel like silk on his skin in St Agnes as he was getting ready for work. It smells like rain, but that might be Cabeswater’s way of celebrating.

***

Blue’s black blazer has a hot pink lining; Adam knows this because the jacket itself is strategically torn all across the back like claw marks and the tattered silk hangs through in strips like ribbons. Her shoes are at least a foot tall and have silver buckles on them; Adam isn’t sure how she managed to get across the uneven ground of the graveyard, but he’s pretty impressed because he himself had struggled and he’s in sensible boots. Then again, he’d also had to stop once to throw up in the bushes, so he’s not really a valid control subject.

Ronan grins at him over Blue’s head. “Alright, Parrish?”

“I’m fine,” says Adam stiffly. He can’t resist another look - Ronan is undeniably smug. Blue glances between them.

“Oh, God, you guys didn’t fuck, did you?”

Ronan chokes, Catholic innocence. Adam goes bright red. “Blue!” gasps Adam, horrified. “No, we didn’t!”

Blue smirks, wicked. “Just checking.”

“Parrish had too much to drink. He was almost sick in his car.”

“Always classy, Adam.”

Adam attempts to look dignified. “I drank for Gansey too.”

“Yeah,” says Ronan, “as in you drank everything Gansey would have. As in, you drank enough for two men. As in -”

“Would you shut up?” Adam snaps. Ronan lapses back into smugness. “You’re so depressing now you’re all sober and sensible.”

“You drive an Audi.”

“Look, a lot of people consider that wild -”

“Like who? And Republicans don’t count. Neither does Ellen from Accounts, or whoever it is you’re dating now.”

Adam is silent for a long moment. “I’m not dating anyone,” he says, eventually. Ronan’s mouth opens, closes.

“Oh,” he says.

“Dead friend!” Blue reminds them brightly. “We can discuss Parrish’s love life later. Preferably much later,” she adds, under her breath.

Adam slides an arm around her waist. “Sorry,” he says. She laughs.

“I was joking,” she says, but she leans into him a little. Ronan joins them, arm around her, and his hand loops in the hem of Adam’s shirt and Adam swallows. They are silent for a while; the breeze picks up, rattles through the trees, sends the leaves dancing. Blue has already placed flowers - orange and pink and yellow, the colors unnatural under the smooth white of the stone, the soft brown of the soil; Adam wants to press his fingers to it but won’t let himself. Cabeswater is singing in his ribs; the branches of the trees reach for him, longing; the petals of the dead flowers stir in desperation. He lets out a long breath and Ronan taps two fingers at his waist.

“You okay?”

“Yeah,” says Adam, tightly. “Yeah, I’m good.”

He lets Blue go, crouches down, gives in and presses his fingers to the ground. Despite the spring heat the soil is cool, the grass soft and damp. He closes his eyes, but he can still see the harsh stone engraving, carved on the insides of his eyelids:

**RICHARD CAMPBELL GANSEY III**

**BELOVED BROTHER, SON AND FRIEND**

**_EXCELSIOR_ **

“I still think we should’ve had it say _Squash One, Squash Two_ ,” says Ronan.

Blue laughs in a way that says she’s feeling a little bit watery. “Shit,” she says, dashing at her eyes, “I have such good eyeliner on.”

Adam says, eyes still closed, “it looks great.”

Blue kicks him and he laughs, and he’s surprised at himself. Cabeswater responds to his laughter by dropping the breeze a little; despite the early April clouds drifting across the azure sky the day is warm, but they’re all grateful anyway. Adam rubs a blade of grass between finger and thumb and sighs deeply. “Damn,” he says, “we’re so old.”

 _Damn_ , he means, _Gansey never got old_. He wonders where Gansey would be now, if he’d lived. Somewhere successful, probably. Maybe the Senate, or on his way there. Married to Blue - or not married, living in sin with two children and a dog. Blue has the word _Jane_ tattooed in stark black letters on the top of her spine - a tattoo artist would be $50 short if Gansey had lived. Adam wouldn’t have been left enough money for tuition, but he might have got a scholarship. And if Gansey had lived, him and Ronan would have - they would have…

Adam very nearly cries. It’s embarrassing; he doesn’t cry, ever. The last time he cried was when he’d realised Gansey was on the death list, alone in his room above St Agnes’ church, and he’d sworn then that tears were useless, that they contributed absolutely nothing; he’d sworn he wouldn’t cry again until Gansey was safe, and Gansey had never been safe, and so he hadn’t cried. He swallows hard.

“Parrish?” says Ronan. Adam blinks hard and stands abruptly; Cabeswater murmurs in his good ear in a disgruntled rustle of leaves. _Greywaren_ , it says.

“I,” he begins, and he doesn’t know what he’s going to say. His skin itches; everything feels wrong. He presses a kiss to Blue’s surprised cheek. “Give me,” he says, and he stops again, because he doesn’t know how long he needs.

“Of course,” says Blue, blinking. “But -”

“I’ll be fine.”

Ronan watches him go in silence.

***

Beyond the gate of the graveyard, Adam rests his head on the steering wheel and muses that he does that too regularly, and then he’s pulling out of the parking lot of the old church and he’s halfway home before he knows what he’s doing.

His mind is scrambled. He’s not even sure what _home_ he’s instinctively driven towards - Monmouth? Fox Way? His tiny room above St Agnes’? The Barns? - until he recognises the single dirt track road, strange under the huge crunching wheels of his car, and the cluster of mailboxes like sentries where the Camaro used to wait.

Something about bringing the Audi to his old front door feels strangely subversive, like modern art entitled: Man Confronts Past, Finds Present Lacking. The crunch under the wheels makes him think of Gansey and the Pig, Gansey dropping him off, the bang of his school bag on his spine when he slammed the door and turned away from his friend and faced the silhouette of his father on the porch. Gansey’s worried eyes, shadowed by the headlights. Adam turns off the ignition; there is no figure there this time. His father is too busy in jail to await his son, and his mother had gathered the broken pieces of her heart and packed them into a carpet bag and taken herself to Adam’s grandmother’s upstate without saying goodbye. The stairs to the door are half caved in from the weight of seven years of leaves and mould and sunshine, the gutters choked with it. Adam slams the door of the Audi behind him and his feet leave patterns in the undisturbed dirt. One of the other trailers has a light on in the window, a flicker of a TV set, but there isn’t a mimicking flicker of interest; it feels like there’s nothing alive for miles around. Even Cabeswater doesn’t reach here.

He spikes his thumb on the front door, a splinter stubbornly reminding him that he belongs there. Some of the boards are shattered - the house must have been a hideout for local kids for a while. Someone has sprayed graffiti over the walls of his old kitchen. A syringe cracks under his boot; maybe it had been a hideout for Ronan too. As soon as the thought crosses his mind Adam dismisses it. Ronan had had Monmouth to lie and get high in; that’s why he’s alive, and that’s why Monmouth belongs to Aglionby now, a new dorm. Too many ghosts.

There are no ghosts here; they’d been outside, where the Pig used to park. Adam uses the word _ghost_ rarely, and finds it infuriating when it’s referred to casually, in the city by people who have never seen their friend disappear into midair because he didn’t have the energy to stay present, by people who have never watched a King awaken as someone else dies. But now he means _ghosts_. He feels them firmly under the stars, and they try and sneak in through the clapboard as he creaks his way down the length of it. It’s probably dangerous in here, but he’s faced danger in this corridor more times than he can count. When he reaches the door to his old bedroom he touches his bad ear and then the wall, like a blessing.

His room is empty; he’s not sure what he had been expecting. A teenaged Adam, sitting on the old mattress, phone in hand, waiting for that midnight call, _Ronan’s gone?_ His father, belt in hand? It’s ridiculous, but he still leans against the doorframe, rests a hand on the oddly warm wood, and lets himself breathe for a long moment. Nothing. Emptiness, like a chest cavity.

The way Gansey had died had not been bloody or violent, so Adam isn’t sure why the phrase _chest cavity_ reminds him of that moment, but somehow it does. The room feels empty because it misses Gansey, or more accurately - as Gansey had never set foot within it - the _promise_ of Gansey. Maybe that’s what Adam misses too.

When he gets out into the yard it begins to rain.

His car isn’t like the Camaro; its silhouette against the sky is sleek instead of snub-nosed; there is no haze of orange; it probably will survive for much longer. And yet something about it there, the incongruity of its expensive tires on the dirt ground, makes Adam sit heavily, and he doesn’t realise he’s crying until it’s already begun and it’s much too late to stop it. It sneaks up on him, this grief. It surprises him like an old friend; he rounds the corner and there it is, arms spread and ready to welcome him home. Cabeswater whispers, _it’s okay_ , and the burnt stalks of the corn wave at him comfortingly and he sits straight-backed with that perfect Aglionby posture for as long as he can until he has to buckle forwards because he just _can’t breathe_.

The rain is so predictable, there’s so much pathetic fallacy in it, that Adam senses Cabeswater behind it, but even so it comforts him to have the water pouring down off the gutters, soaking into his hair and his jacket and his collar, pooling in the laces of his shoes, falling off his fingertips like diamonds, turning the beige dirt into the sienna brown of Adam’s summer skin that year they’d searched for Glendower, when the beating sun had forced Ronan’s freckles into sharp relief and had burnt Gansey’s cheekbones until they’d peeled merrily, somehow making him look more handsome instead of less. Adam cries for a long long time and it rains with him and when he’s finally finished, when his eyes feel swollen and sore and his chest is heaving and his hands are clutched hard around the base of his skull like he’s the only solid thing in the entire world the rain peeters off and ends until it’s just the occasional drip, and Adam stands on shaky feet and squelches his way through the dust-now-mud, and he’s in the car and the memory hits him in a heavy rush.

***

It was 300 Fox Way in the dark. Gansey had been dead for ten days. Adam was in jeans and the first t-shirt he’d grabbed. He was groggy from lack of sleep, from that strange exhaustion that comes from grief, but Blue had rung and she’d said _Ronan_ and he’d got in the shitty Honda-thing and had driven, haphazard and probably dangerously, across town, and every molecule in his body was saying _Ronan_ in her terrified voice. _I can’t do this,_ he thought, _I can’t do this, I can’t, I can’t lose him as well_ , and he wasn’t even aware that he was thinking it, it was just a solid knowledge in his bones, that this would break him.

Blue opened the door in her pajamas too. She was in a state of abject hysteria. Behind her Maura had her arms crossed, startlingly small with her hair wrapped in a scarf, make-up-less. Orla was so young, Adam realised. Everyone was there. Blue’s face was streaked with tears; there was something about her bare feet on the doorstep that made Adam’s heart clench; he put his hands gently on the girl’s shoulders and pushed her inside, hooking the front door with his foot and shoving it closed with his hip. “What is it?” he asked, into the corridor.

Maura was too silent; they were all just looking at him. “God, I’m so sorry,” said Blue, “– it’s so late – I just couldn’t – I didn’t know what to do –” She swiped furiously at her cheeks and her breath was coming in quick bursts and Adam’s mouth was dry. He let her shoulders go.

“Is he okay?” He kicked off his boots at the door, an automatically Henrietta-polite, Old South gesture that seemed to have no place here; he let the warmth of the house begin to thaw out his cold bare arms and headed for the stairs. Orla moved aside; they were all like ghosts, those women, ghosts who watched him with wide eyes. Ronan wasn’t dead then, thought Adam. He knew what they looked like when someone was dead. Blue followed him; a shower was running. On the landing she caught his wrist.

“I don’t know,” she said, voice drenched in misery. “I don’t know what he took.”

Adam’s heart did a strange thump, missed a beat. For some stupid reason he’d assumed Ronan was just very drunk; this was something else, something that added an extra layer to the air, like the whole house had been chilled. Blue half-tripped on the carpet; her room greeted him like a sucker punch to the ribs, almost unchanged in the two years he’d known her, except now the photographs were different. Gansey’s face grinned down from above her bed, arm looped around Adam’s shoulders. The Adam in the photograph looked like an entirely different person; the darkness removed surfaces, rendered everything in a flat 2D, the white sheets on Blue’s bed ghostly and almost audibly bright. It was her shower.

“I just -” said Blue, and gestured helplessly at her bathroom.

Adam nudged the door open. Ronan seemed both large and small under the water, his head lolling back against the wall of the shower, his hair, only just growing out, plastered flat and dark against his skull. His tattoo was as dark as a knife slash under the fluorescent lights, the sneaking vine tendrils like trickles of blood all down his spine; it made Adam think of that night in the church, months ago, the child’s hand, the blood on the flagstones. Ronan’s pale face by the altar. He knelt by the open shower door, felt the spray on his face; Ronan cracked one eye open and lifted his head as though it weighed too much to move, slowly and painfully. “Hey,” said Adam.

“Parrish,” said Ronan, like he was shocked to see him, and laughed. The inside of his right wrist was covered in a flurry of small marks, like fang bites, like snowflakes, up the inside of his elbow; they were red and the blue of his veins stood out under them, like the summer stream in Cabeswater, always rushing. His irises were swallowed by his pupils, his eyes fathomless, but other than that he looked almost normal, his grin still capable of jolting Adam’s heart. He struggled into more of a sitting position. “Fuck - where’s Gansey?”

Adam went very still. Blue was in the doorway; the sound she made was awful, like she’d swallowed poison, and she didn’t say a word but the door slammed shut behind her. Ronan blinked, unfocused. “If that was a joke,” Adam began, but he knew it wasn’t. Ronan shook his head.

“Yeah,” he said, “a joke. Why would I joke about that? Shit.”

“Shit,” Adam echoed, and choked down an absurd rush of tears. _Jesus_ , he thought, furiously. _Jesus fuck._ Just like that it was all erased - just like that it was as if the wake had never happened, as if Adam had never had to see Helen Gansey cry. Ronan had a startling ability to do that, to make his words come real. It wasn’t anything to do with magic, it was just him.

Ronan pushed himself up and for a moment Adam couldn’t bring himself to steady him, didn’t dare touch him, as if thin skin would give way under his hands. Ronan propped himself up against the wall, his jeans soaked through, the denim stiff and dark; his feet slid out from under him and Adam couldn’t just let him fall, he had an image of his head smashed on the floor, the red and the white, and he grabbed and ended up half soaked himself, holding Ronan up with a hand on his shoulder and his waist. Ronan grinned.

“Alright,” he said. He was very close to Adam, his mouth very red.

“Sit down,” said Adam, horrified to find his voice shaking. “Sit down and tell me what you took.”

Ronan was gripping his upper arms so tightly that Adam was losing circulation. He said, “don’t be an asshole, Parrish,” and the insult was automatic. “If you let Dick call Declan I’ll kill you.”

Adam bit down hard on the inside of his cheek. “Okay,” he said, “I won’t.”

“Thanks.” Ronan let out a shuddering breath. “I need to sit down.”

“Yeah.” Ronan was taller than Adam but thinner, corded muscle, Adam’s shoulders broader; he lowered him easily. Everything felt wrong. He felt instinctively that Ronan should be sick, but he didn’t seem inclined that way. “What did you take?”

“What?”

“Tonight.” Ronan was squinting at him through the water. Adam thought, in a lurch - _he came to Fox Way_. Why didn’t he come to me? “Do we need to get you to the hospital?” Ronan laughed. There was something other-worldly about the sound. When Adam had slept next to him at Monmouth Ronan had dreamt up a small posy of flowers that had settled in Adam’s hair in the morning; he thought that instead Ronan’s mind tonight would bring up black flowers, with spiny stems, sap like black octopus ink, the kind that would burn through their sheets, their clothes. Adam tried to force himself to be efficient. “Cocaine? I need to know so I know what to google.”

Ronan’s face scrunched up. “Cocaine? Who am I, K?”

“How the fuck am I supposed to know? There doesn’t seem much difference right now.”

Ronan flinched right back - Adam stuttered like a car that wouldn’t start. _“Shit_ ,” he cursed, like his mouth was full of marbles, “shit, Ronan, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean -”

“Yeah, you did.”

Adam deflated. “Yeah, I did.”

***

When Adam gets to St Agnes and it’s raining again and this time it’s just rain and Ronan is there.

Adam isn’t even surprised, but he is annoyed. He slams the door of the car closed behind him, hoping that the noise it makes is somewhere between _furious but in a platonic way_ and _quiet enough not to wake the nuns;_ Ronan is sheltering under the porch of the church but Adam doesn’t bother joining him. He’s already soaked through and it’s easier to cast an intimidating figure out here instead of being crammed in a small space next to him, too close for thoughts. Adam crosses his arms. He knows he’s obviously been crying; he hopes the rain and the darkness will mask it.

“What are you doing here?” he says. “Stalking is an offense, Lynch.”

Ronan looks like he wants to snap back, but he visibly swallows his retort. He takes a second, and then he just says, “Cabeswater was nagging me.”

Boy, does Adam love sentient forests. “Cabeswater,” he repeats, raising his voice over the rain.

“No, Parrish, the other magical landscape feature that we know.”

“Alright, look -” Adam exhales heavily. He’s getting cold. Ronan steps to the left.

“Stop being dumb,” he says, “come here.”

“I can’t believe you’re the one telling me not to be dumb,” says Adam grumpily. “I own my own apartment outright. I have had two long-term relationships. I have a steady salary and I’m up for promotion. I hate this.”

But he goes anyway. Ronan’s right; it is warmer, the small dangling lamp giving off enough heat that Adam’s cold hands begin to prickle. The sensation brings back sharp memories of endless hours of work, of stumbling up these stairs at three in the morning with the full knowledge that he still has a paper to write for school that he can’t afford to fail; he tucks his hands up under his arms and shivers and watches the raindrops drip off his bangs. He’s aware that he’s sulking. Ronan leans against the wall opposite; the light makes the years fall off his face, shedding them like a bad dream. Like a good dream. Adam watches him slyly from under his long eyelashes while pretending to shiver, knowing that the only person who used to catch him watching is long gone now. His knuckles have healing pink scabs on them; Ronan still boxes, but Adam suspects it’s the kind within a ring, with rules and a referee, and hopefully not with his brother. _If you let Dick ring Declan I’ll kill you_. Ronan picks absently at one of scabs. Silence has never bothered him, but now he isn’t confrontational about it; he let it wash over him like waves.

Eventually Adam says, “I went back home.”

Ronan looks up at him sharply. “Monmouth?” he questions. Adam shakes his head - Monmouth is long gone.

“No, my dad’s house.”

Something in Ronan’s face changes, like a photograph pulled into focus. Old half-remembered anger flits across his thin mouth, tightening it at the corners; his hair is drying in even closer curls now, the rainwater forcing it into line. “Oh,” he says, and flicks the scab away. Adam wonders if he’s going to push, but there’s enough of the old Ronan in him that he shies away from emotional talk. Instead, he says, “Blue thinks Gansey’s gonna show up.”

“Oh,” Adam echoes, because there isn’t anything else to say. “Because it’s been seven years?”

“Yeah,” says Ronan. “Seven’s pretty…” he searches for a word. Adam chimes in:

“Auspicious.”

“I was going to say special. Jesus, Parrish.”

“Right.” Adam smiles but it feels forced, and the specter of Gansey hovers. He still feels hoarse and raw from crying; he’s not sure he wants to have this conversation. He swallows. “I thought she was going out with that girl. The biologist.”

“She is. But.” Ronan swallows too; his throat looks like liquid gold under the dim light. “That sort of thing doesn’t really go away, does it?”

It sounds too much like a question, but Ronan is studiously glaring at his nails and Adam can’t catch his eye.

Usually Ronan does relationships like he fights - fast and hard and serious, not taking prisoners, you’re either in or out, motherfucker. Adam says usually but what he really means is, _that’s what we were like_. Ronan doesn’t like casual, Ronan doesn’t like the word _dating_. Ronan had said - stuttered, really - the words _I love you_ two weeks in, in the Barns, with Adam pressed deep inside him, hands braced on the grass. Adam’s belief in true love had been destroyed when Gansey had died and he’d left Ronan or Ronan had left him, however it had happened - but it looks like a little bit of faith might have hung on by its fingernails, because his heart does a horrible jumping jolt. His mouth is the dryest thing under the porch; he stutters, clumsily, “I - I guess it doesn’t.”

“Adam,” Ronan starts, painfully cracked. The blood is rushing in Adam’s ears.

“I can’t do this,” he says, and he’s lying, he can do this, he’s just scared, he’s just a coward - here he is again, flinching away like he always does - Ronan has a hand on his shoulder. Adam jumps. Ronan lets out a breath; he’s close enough that Adam feels it stir his bangs.

“I know,” he says. “I’m not going to make you.”

Adam’s hands hang impotently by his sides and the urge to reach out and touch is overwhelming, but instead he tugs away and steps out and into the rain. It’s supposed to shock him into normality, but instead he just shudders under it and wants Ronan’s warmth even more. The urge to say something nasty is bubbling up his throat like hatred and he passes a hand over his face in a visible attempt to restrain himself; when he opens his eyes Ronan’s face is showing something close to heartbreak. He says, again, “Adam,” and unspoken is _don’t_.

“I’m not,” Adam starts, and his voice is sticking. He’s starting to shiver again; his shirt is clinging to him and he undoes his tie in a frustrated rush and Ronan laughs and it sounds like it hurts.

“If you’re going to strip you may as well do it in here,” he says, raising his voice a little over the sound of the rain on the cheap tin roof.

“I’ve always hated these things,” Adam retorts, and his voice is too high and loud and he can hardly breathe. “Jesus, what is this -” and he turns and faces the streets and inhales and exhales so fast that he goes a little dizzy, and then Ronan’s arm is around his waist and he’s bowing into his warm side like a tree in the wind. His hand rests on Adam’s hip, platonic and easy, and Adam turns into his chest and tucks his face into the space between Ronan’s neck and collarbone and inhales and Ronan rests his chin on the top of Adam’s head and Adam can’t see him but in the same what that he knows Ronan can dream the world he knows Ronan has his eyes closed. His long fingers smooth up Adam’s spine and Adam shudders and then is still. It’s the most still he’s been for seven years. He thinks, _I’m an idiot_.

“Okay?” asks Ronan.

Adam’s mouth brushes the column of Ronan’s throat when he replies, “okay.” Everything is very quiet now. Ronan’s hair is so thick that the water runs off the curls in beaded droplets; they’re running down the back of Adam’s neck, rounder than raindrops; the tarmac beneath his feet feels solid for the first time.

“Do you want me to drive you back?” says Ronan, at the same time as Adam says, “marry me.”

Ronan pulls away so fast Adam almost falls, but he’s very calm now and he isn’t afraid at all, because even though Ronan’s mouth forms this perfect ‘o’ shape of surprise and his eyes are huge and wide he doesn’t take more than a step away. He’s lost for words, which is a state Adam has never seen him in sober. “I -” he stammers, “I - I’m sorry, what?”

Adam says, “I would go down on one knee, but I don’t want to get any wetter, honestly.”

Ronan’s eyes bulge a little. He opens his mouth, closes it, opens it again. Adam says, “I’m in love with you.”

Ronan says, faintly, “I’m asleep.”

Adam presses the back of his hand to Ronan’s cold cheek. His eyelashes are fluttering. “You’re not,” he says, and a small tendril of doubt unfurls itself wickedly in his chest, and he adds, in a rush too fast not to be desperate, “you don’t have to, it’s just that - well, you’re not much for dating, and I’m not either, not with you - I couldn’t bear it, acting like it’s not serious -”

Ronan pinches the bridge of his nose with his thumb and forefinger and for a disconcerting moment he looks a bit like Gansey. He says, “Parrish, shut up.”

Adam shuts up. Ronan is soaking now; he’d changed out of his suit and his t-shirt, once scarlet, is now the dark red of clotted blood. He opens his eyes and says, “you were crying.”

“Yeah,” says Adam. “Lynch -”

“Okay,” says Ronan.

Adam actually sways backwards. “What?”

“I said okay.” There’s a glimmer of a challenge in his eyes now. “That is, if you were serious and this isn’t a convoluted self-punishment scheme. Because if it is I’m not getting involved. I’ve had enough of that for a lifetime.”

“It isn’t,” Adam says weakly. “I was serious.”

A drop of water rolls off the end of Ronan’s nose; he grins, so brightly that Adam’s whole chest swells up, that it’s like the clouds have parted; he says, “go on, then,” and he’s almost vibrating with joy and Adam wants to kiss him so badly he thinks he might _die_.

“What?” he sighs, like a teenager.

“Get on one knee, then.”

Adam laughs, and he knows he’s grinning too, that they’re standing outside this rundown church smiling at each other, that they haven’t kissed in seven years, that anyone watching would think they’re insane, and Adam goes onto one knee and feels the water sinking in through his pants, and Ronan is beaming and beaming and Adam says, “Ronan Lynch, will you marry me?”

“Shit,” says Ronan, “if I have to, I guess,” and he pulls him up by his hands and kisses him and Adam - and he isn’t ashamed to admit this either, when Orla sits them down and pumps them for details - cries.


End file.
